


Falsified Authentication

by Keemax



Category: Uta no Prince-sama
Genre: I forgot it even existed, Mentions of alcohol, Otoya's Phantom Thief mask gave me flashbacks to the Green Lantern movie, having to refer to Otoya as "Ittoki" reminded me of things that I can't unsee, implication that someone has been drugged, ships are just implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 10:50:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19972840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keemax/pseuds/Keemax
Summary: Even if he didn't like Tokilock poking around his shop that morning, this was taking things a bit too far.





	Falsified Authentication

**Author's Note:**

> Posted as an admin piece to celebrate the countdown to the Utapri Zine release!
> 
> Summary is one sentence long because it's 6am an I couldn't think of anything else

She’d care a little bit more about whose office this was and, by extension, how the boys were treating it, if the pressure on her temples didn’t feel like spear points piercing into either side of her brain.

As it is, it’s all she can do to just stand there, eyes closed and fingers pressed to either side of her face. She can hear Cecil push a desk up to the far wall near the window, that four-chorded measure of its legs shrieking against the wood, and that sweeping cascade of someone’s neatly lined stack of paperwork falling the floor, the pages fluttering over one another like autumn leaves.

She opens her eyes and tries to focus on Ittoki’s back - on the sharp outline of his shoulder blades protruding from underneath the waistcoat jacket, on his white gloved fingers weaving together in tangles over the lock on the door. The image shifts and blurs. The imaginary skewer in her skull is the primordial moon, the spikes of clarity gush and shrivel in fast-paced, interchanging tides.

She shuts her eyes again and tries, for the love of all hell, just to _think_.

There’s a creak of a hinge on a window. The cooled air tickles her nose.

She _thinks_ there had been a strange aftertaste to her champagne.

She thinks it was odd that Tokilock had insisted she finish her glass before they resumed their conversation, and that it was only after she’d done so that he’d begun to indulge her in some of the finer details of his investigation. Every other sentence seemed to be a question, fired like bullets into the rushing stream. Her tongue was soon shot; a flapping fish pulled half-dead from the water.

He’d listened so intently. That serene, clear water blue gaze rippling with concern when he offered her his elbow to anchor herself upon. She’d seen his hand slither to the notebook in his breast pocket, fingers curling between the spiralled rings.

Ittoki’s name had just passed his lips for the first time that evening, when the power had been cut and, like the devil, Ittoki himself had descended from the rafters. The sight of his cape, a black and red sail billowing behind him, sent up screams from the crowd below.

She can certainly understand why. In the darkness he must have looked like the real thing, the Phantom Thief Otoyarsene Lupin come to steal away the museum’s treasures.

Just another one of his pranks.

She inhales slowly, breathing back out at half the speed and then repeating the process twice more before she tries looking at Ittoki again. He’s still standing in front of her, which makes him the easier target and besides: he’s rather nice in that suit.

It cradles his torso, the curve of his waist and the slant of his legs. It’s as black as stone; clean edges cutting definition against bright white detail, tanned skin and a sliver of jawline. His face had slightly turned toward her, one imperial red iris watching her as he pulled on his lip, framed by midnight lace.

He catches her, catching him, and visibly flinches, turning in an abrupt swivel to face the door again.

She wishes he wouldn’t move so quickly. All she sees is motion blur and a beating pulse that resonates from inside her skull.

She has to close her eyes, put a hand to her head, and exhale slowly through her nose.

“That wasn’t funny, Ittoki.” She presses down on her eyelids, hard enough to see white webbed cracks flash behind them, “Detective Tokilock looked like he wanted to arrest you.”

There’s a pause, for about half a second. Nothing but the soft rustle of fabric.

Then there’s spluttering and stammering and hollow thunks and metallic clangs. She grits her teeth. Her vision tilts.

She looks to her left to see Cecil sprawled on the ground, legs bent and one hand clutching the back of his head. His mouth is hanging open, his monocle glittering in the starlight. His stare shifts to the space just beyond her, where Ittoki had been standing, and his expression seems to tighten.

He shakes his head. He looks back at Haruka. She raises an eyebrow at him, then turns to face his brother.

Ittoki has his back pressed flat against the door. His eyes are wider than Cecil’s, and when he speaks his voice is pitched and breathy.

“ _No_. I- uhm..” he swallows, clears his throat. His tone becomes smoother, but it still seems to vibrate at its core “I-I believe you have me mistaken for someone else. Miss.”

She squints. The imaginary skewer starts to twist and Ittoki starts to go blurry around the edges. His face flows in and out of focus.

“Are you kidding? You think I’m not going to recognise you because I can’t see your cheekbones?”

His mouth draws into a thin line at that.

She waits for him to duck his head, to take off his dramatic top hat and spin it between his fingers. She waits for the sheepish expression, for the wide toothy smile and for him to rub the back of his neck as Cecil chimes in from behind. She waits with her arms crossed, drums her fingers and wonders how irritated Tokilock would be once he found them.

But Ittoki doesn’t do any of those things.

Instead he just stares. The movement of his chest, which had been visibly heaving from the moment she first spoke, had only gotten quicker. His complexion is pale, and the moonlight streaming through the window betrays small shimmers of sweat clinging to his neck. His eyes dart between her and, presumably, Cecil just behind her. He wets his lower lip.

Something about this image makes her want to take step back.

He’s tense and he’s coiled, like there’s magma boiling in his veins. Other, smaller details start sending ripples across her thoughts - forming quiet questions that sink slowly into conscious deliberation.

Like how the suit he’s wearing is much finer than the one he wore for entertaining the children.

And why would he be here, dressed like this, when there were no children to see his performance?

She moves backwards – just a bit, just on reflex – but when she places her foot down again her heel skids away, surfing the crest of the loose paperwork littering the floor. The earth flips over her head in the glorified movement of a capsizing canoe and she falls.

And then floats.

Ittoki’s face is above hers, splotchy and bleeding into the background. The red and black seem to bubble. She can’t tell if it’s his arms wrapped around her back or if it’s Cecil supporting her from behind or both.

Maybe it’s both. There’s such a strong floral aroma hanging in the air for only one of them to be close.

It’s then that those little nagging bits and pieces start to swim together, aligning themselves into a school of thought. They’re difficult to hold onto and squirm between her fingers, her eyelids sinking closed and her head tipping towards the floor, but she remembers why Tokilock had shown up at Ittoki’s shop in the first place. He’d been looking for a particular type of flower.

Something with a pungent scent. Something he suspected the phantom thieves were using to mask themselves from the police dogs.

Oh.

The edges of her vision start to flicker and darken, the shadows stretching longer and wider across the room.

Oh _no_.

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone wondering, no Tokilock is not the culprit.


End file.
